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To Hell With Professional Sports
Townhall.com ^ | July 28, 2020 | Derek Hunter

Posted on 07/28/2020 4:09:59 AM PDT by Kaslin

At the outset, I have to say that I’ve never been the biggest sports fan on the planet. So it isn’t a big sacrifice for me to say I’m not going to watch professional sports this year, or maybe ever again. I never actively shunned pro sports, and as a kid I wouldn’t have missed a Tigers or Lions game for just about anything in the world, I just found other things to do as I got older. But I’d wander back for interesting games or championships – there are few things a person isn’t directly involved with that are as exciting as a contest between great athletes when the stakes are high. But with the embrace of radicals like Black Lives Matter by all the leagues, I’m going to make a point of not watching any of it.

I won’t miss basketball at all. The game is boring. I know it’s “fast-paced,” but it’s really not. It takes forever and all that matters is the last two minutes. Each team seems to get 50 timeouts, which sometimes allows them to take the ball out at half-court rather than under the basket. I never cared enough to find out why.

It’s also just not exciting. The first time you saw a buzzer-beating shot to win a game may have been exciting, but haven’t you seen it a thousand times by now? And how many times can anyone get worked up over a 7-foot-tall guy with long arms jumping a foot to slam a ball through a hoop? It seems like everything spectacular that could be done already has been. It’s up and down the court like a really boring tennis match.

That the league has decided to overtake the NFL as the most-woke league in the world only made my resolve harder. That they’re going to paint “Black Lives Matter” and have messages on the backs of their jersey, and undoubtedly protest during the national anthem, killed what little interest I had in even knowing who won the championship.

As for the NFL, again, I don’t care. I didn’t grow up with a professional football team, I grew up with the Detroit Lions. Watching perpetual basement dwellers dwell in the basement is about as exciting as it sounds. The Lions have won one playoff game in the Super Bowl era (in 1991) and only make the playoffs via fluke.

Professional football for me is a distraction on the TV on Sundays – I don’t really look at the action unless it sounds like something exciting is happening. When the kneeling during the anthem started, I stopped even doing that. Now that they’ve gone all-in for Black Lives Matter, I’ll find something else to play in the background.

Baseball is back already (though games are being canceled due to COVID-19 outbreaks), and aside from videos on Twitter, I haven’t bothered to care. A 60-game season does mean anyone can win the World Series this year, but whoever does win will be there prostrating themselves on the altar of a bunch of left-wing radicals. I love baseball, but I love my country more.

It’s not that baseball players are kneeling during the anthem, it’s that the league has caved to the mob and brought politics onto the field. All these leagues have.

Sports served as a distraction from whatever else was happening in the world and our lives, now it’s the manifestation of the Democratic Party’s demands of conformity. I’m not interested in conformity. A bunch of different colored like-minded drones chanting anti-American slogans is not my idea of diversity.

If I want to be preached to, I’ll call a priest, not millionaires who play a game for a living. If I want to learn something, I’ll read a book, not seek out the “feelings” of someone in a profession known for having proxies take their classes for them. And if I want a distraction from the stress of daily life, I’ll practice self-dentistry before I give these pampered, privileged narcissists a second of my time.

Personally, if their whole seasons collapsed and had to be canceled because they snuck an infected super-spreader into their bubble, I’d be just fine with that.

Sports could have been bigger than ever, more important than ever, and could have helped bring the country together during the pandemic by being the distraction people need from everything we’ve lost. Instead, like everything else, liberal politics was rammed into it to the point that it’s just another appendage of the Democratic Party. You couldn’t pay me to be a Democrat, I sure as hell am not about to fund any of their fellow travelers. Until they get the politics out of sports, I’m getting the sports out of my


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: baseball; basketball; blacklivesmatter; breadandcircuses; football; lawandorder; politics
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To: Kaslin

I don’t want to be lectured to by athletes or actors/singers with celebrity privilege.


81 posted on 07/28/2020 6:50:37 AM PDT by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: Kaslin

And it’s not just professional sports, college sports are just as bad. I’m done with all of them.


82 posted on 07/28/2020 6:50:54 AM PDT by aquila48 (Do not let them make you care! Guilting you is how they control you.)
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To: CaptainMorgantown
Professional sports is a pure luxury good that competes with a lot of other possible uses of our time and money.

In addition to the entertainment and gambling, it was also a means of socializing. Get together with the guys, watch the game on the big screen, have some beers and a few laughs.

There are much better ways to connect with other like minded individuals, even if they're some distance apart.

The internet has also allowed more learning how to do things instead of being a spectator.

83 posted on 07/28/2020 6:57:01 AM PDT by T.B. Yoits
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To: bray

The worst part of college football it that it is played by students. Honestly, I never watch, or care to watch any televised or live sport event. Professional or collegiate.


84 posted on 07/28/2020 6:59:28 AM PDT by Tomato lover (Faith can survive without freedom. But, freedom cannot survive without faith. Come quickly, Jesus)
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To: aquila48

There is a consequence for supporting terrorists i wonder if they, sports workers, are ready to be front line targets in the war. They are now and I’m sure the cops will do everything to help. These people have no idea what’s headed their way


85 posted on 07/28/2020 6:59:58 AM PDT by datricker (the war of 2024 will be fought at 2.4Ghz stock up on aluminium foil now!)
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To: Brookhaven

Yeah my favorite feature with satellite is the dvr. That doesn’t outweigh my desire to save $1200 a year however.

Thanks for the info.


86 posted on 07/28/2020 7:01:44 AM PDT by V_TWIN
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To: real saxophonist

“It always amazed me how many of my customers had practically a ‘shrine’ to John Elway or Peyton Manning and the Broncos, in the front room of the house.”

I wonder at the emptiness of their lives of people like that.


87 posted on 07/28/2020 7:02:39 AM PDT by aquila48 (Do not let them make you care! Guilting you is how they control you.)
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To: mn-bush-man

Disc golf is great fun to watch. And its been great to see how advanced these “amateurs” have become in broadcasting tournaments: drones, flight paths, good and often funny commentary.


88 posted on 07/28/2020 7:07:17 AM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear
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To: Magnatron
"even though my wife is a former member of the USA Gymnastics team"

You do have much better things to occupy your time than watch televised sports! ;-)

89 posted on 07/28/2020 7:09:41 AM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear
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To: RipSawyer

I’ve enjoyed spectator sports most of my life but I never got that emotional and invested in it like that. Now with the latest I am more and more detached but that has been happening for the last 15 years or so. The last Olympics I watched with much interest were the 2000 games and the winter ones a bit longer but they are close to dead for me now. I can’t even recall the last world series I watched and I used to watch them all at one time. The last Super Bowl is a few years back now. I know who won the latest titles but never watched the games involved. KC, Washington, Toronto, and St Louis. France I think won the last soccer World Cup. Lewis Hamilton is the reigning world champ in F1. I have no idea who is the heavyweight boxing champ as that sport had wilted as UFC has risen. The last summer Olympics were in Rio. I assume the US won the most medals but couldn’t name anyone who did at this point and all this trivia will probably no longer occupy my mind at some point in the future.


90 posted on 07/28/2020 7:18:03 AM PDT by xp38
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To: KarlInOhio

It would be interesting to know what kind of escape clauses each of these entities had in their contracts for occasions like these, or if they even contemplated such situations.

From a “who’s going to feel the brunt” first I would think the networks, the teams and the vendors are first in line since they will directly impacted by the loss of the audiences. How that percolate to the players and advertisers and other hangers-ons remains to be seen.


91 posted on 07/28/2020 7:22:40 AM PDT by aquila48 (Do not let them make you care! Guilting you is how they control you.)
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To: Brookhaven

Cut the chord in May (Comcast). Been meaning to do it for awhile. Got an HD antennae which gets all the local channels if I care to watch any sports at all (highly unlikely this year), and a Mofi Network to run our internet. It’s not as fast as the Comcast hookup, but I don’t care. It’s fast enough for our needs, and I get enough screen time at work. Better things to do then sit in front of the tube.


92 posted on 07/28/2020 7:24:40 AM PDT by Mama Shawna
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Let us know if they have BLM trappings at the Edmonton and Toronto arenas.

ff

93 posted on 07/28/2020 8:01:05 AM PDT by foreverfree
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To: Kaslin

One of the goals of Communists is to eliminate sports and the concept of a manly man. They are succeeding.


94 posted on 07/28/2020 8:24:29 AM PDT by aimhigh (THIS is His commandment . . . . 1 John 3:23)
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To: Brookhaven

95 posted on 07/28/2020 8:28:10 AM PDT by yoe (Want to HELP the Slave Trade and Drug Cartels in USA? Vote for a democrat........)
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To: Phillyred

Now try losing television. I will admit...there are very few well written shows and movies. That said, one can enjoy the few good ones...by net or other storage medium. But cut the money tree down to most of the television media.


96 posted on 07/28/2020 8:34:03 AM PDT by Getready (Wisdom is more valuable than gold and diamonds, and harder to find.)
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To: EEGator

That’s about the only sport I could get behind. The closer the better.


97 posted on 07/28/2020 8:36:13 AM PDT by zeugma (Stop deluding yourself that America is still a free country.)
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To: Brookhaven

“... what a waste cable-TV was money wise.”

Many like me dropped cable years ago. 20meg Internet and an antenna now. Don’t miss 200 channels of nothing I want to watch, half being infomercials.

Hurt the cable companies for this pro sports B.S. and see what happens...


98 posted on 07/28/2020 9:07:18 AM PDT by polymuser (It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and so few by deceit. Noel Coward)
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To: SamAdams76

“I never understood why grown men would pay over $100 at a Pro Shop for an oversized Jersey with some other man’s name on it and then wear it in public! “

Good point! Compensating?


99 posted on 07/28/2020 9:09:28 AM PDT by polymuser (It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and so few by deceit. Noel Coward)
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To: who_would_fardels_bear

“Disc golf is great fun to watch. And its been great to see how advanced these “amateurs” have become in broadcasting tournaments: drones, flight paths, good and often funny commentary.”

Will check it out, sounds worth watching. Probably a lot of regular folks in it.


100 posted on 07/28/2020 9:12:02 AM PDT by polymuser (It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and so few by deceit. Noel Coward)
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